Festivals & Events
Festivals & Events
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“Character, as Always, Proved to Be King”: Directors Susan Froemke and John Hoffman | Rancher, Farmer, Fisherman
During its development, production or eventual distribution, what specific challenge of communication did, or will your film, face? How did you deal with it, or how are you planning to deal with it? The biggest challenge was working concurrently with an author who was profiling the same subjects but in a different medium. Print and film lend themselves to different ways of storytelling. The flood of information constantly coming at us from the author, with so much color, complexity, and detail, took time to sort through and evaluate in terms of what was best suited to film. We sometimes suffered […]
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“Mistakes Are What Make Life Interesting”: Director Helene Hegemann | Axolotl Roadkill
During its development, production or eventual distribution, what specific challenge of communication did, or will your film, face? How did you deal with it, or how are you planning to deal with it? Axolotl Overkill is about a 16-year old girl, but was never supposed to be the typical coming-of-age odyssey that shows a teenager who struggles with the world just to find her place in it in the end. We always felt like we needed to do something different and to really make it relatable to how a young person feels – instead of showing her from the outside and […]
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“How Can You Make an Elephant Communicate Different Emotions?”: Director Kristen Tan | Pop Aye
During its development, production or eventual distribution, what specific challenge of communication did, or will your film, face? How did you deal with it, or how are you planning to deal with it? How can you make an elephant communicate different emotions? This was a challenge I found myself saddled with during the production of Pop Aye. Obviously, there’s a tight balancing act involved here. I did not want the elephant to be cloyingly expressive or overtly cute — we’re not making a children’s film here. I wanted him to have the same kind of nuanced and naturalistic performance as […]
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“Film Has a Unique Ability to Transcend Barriers”: Director Amman Abbasi | Dayveon
During its development, production or eventual distribution, what specific challenge of communication did, or will your film, face? How did you deal with it, or how are you planning to deal with it? One of the great powers of cinema is its ability to create empathy and communicate with the world. How people live, what people dream of, what we all struggle with. Ultimately it’s all pretty similar and, in my opinion, film has a unique ability to transcend barriers of place, time and condition to allow us to understand we all are more alike than different. In my opinion, […]
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10 Tips for Surviving the Sundance Film Festival
Sundance Survival Guides are a tradition here at Filmmaker. Producer and Contributing Editor Alicia Van Couvering wrote one in 2009 and again in 2012, and producer Mynette Louie offered her advice in ’15. This year, producer Alexandra Byer (Dark Night) remembers her own rituals for making it safely through the Park City gauntlet. Ignore these at your own peril. — Editor 1. Dress warmly, leave the heels at home. You are headed to the snowy mountains of Utah! Most people traveling to Park City in the winter months are headed to ski or snowboard, but you are just planning to […]
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Cameraperson and O.J.: Made in America Top the 2017 Cinema Eye Honors
The Cinema Eye Honors, which has been celebrating exceptional documentary filmmaking since 2007, wrapped its first decade tonight with its annual awards ceremony, hosted by documentary director Steve James, at the Museum of the Moving Image. Kirsten Johnson’s memoiristic meditation on documentary image-making, Cameraperson was the big winner, taking home three awards, including Outstanding Achievement in Nonfiction Filmmaking, Outstanding Achievement in Editing and Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography, while Ezra Edelman’s sprawling O.J.: Made in America won two: Outstanding Achievement in Directing and Outstanding Achievement in Production. Other winners included Laura Ricciardi and Moira Demos’s Netflix series Making a Murderer (Outstanding […]
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Big Sky Documentary Film Festival 2017 Announces Full Lineup
The 14th annual Big Sky Documentary Film Festival has announced the official selections of the 2017 festival, which takes place February 17-26 in Missoula, Montana. The festival will screen over 200 films from 50 nations as well as retrospectives of Academy Award-winning filmmaker Daniel Junge and Montreal-based film collective EyeSteelFilm. In addition to retrospective programs, planned special events include Healing Blue, a multimedia dance/film performance. Longtime partner HBO Documentary Films will present Alexis Bloom and Fisher Stevens’ new feature Bright Lights: Starring Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds on opening night. Closing night will be presented by Big Sky premiere sponsor Showtime Documentary Films. Other films to be screened during the festival include Leah […]
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2016: A Year of 14 Film Festivals
In 2016 I visited a number of festivals that I haven’t visited before, and many for the first time. In a lot of ways this was a year that festivals finally seem to have come to grips with how the industry shifted/imploded following 2008’s global economic recession, which resulted in the slashing of film industry and media budgets. Also, we now have a firmer idea on how internet streaming and video on demand have changed film industry habits and consumer behaviour. (Remember how Amazon and Netflix ate up Sundance in ’16.) Television has also taken its place as an equal […]
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We Can’t Make The Same Mistake Twice: At the RIDM (Rencontres internationales du documentaire de Montréal)
Is it worth developing a taxonomy of film festivals? Would such an order more resemble a food pyramid or a series of loosely overlapping Venn diagrams? At the peak or center of either we can be assured to find prestige world-class festivals à la TIFF or the NYFF. In the 1990s, Montréal had its own to rival and even challenge these, the Montréal World Film Festival. Technically the festival still exists, though as a shell of its former glory following decades of poor programming and mismanagement by the president Serge Losique. As was widely reported in August, this year the […]
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Under the Radar: The 31st Mar del Plata Film Festival
Situated at the windy seaside of the Argentinian port city and resort destination, the Mar del Plata Film Festival is rare in its aversion to trends and commercially driven programming. Selection is motivated not by industry concerns but rather genuine cinephilia, impressively supported by a devout and adventurous local audience. Programmers give generous, enthusiastic introductions, and there’s a vibe of sincerity guiding the proceedings. Taking place in November — springtime in the country — the fest has the luxury of assembling the best films of the year, but it’s hardly an automated “festival of festivals,” featuring plenty of bold, unusual films alongside expected […]
